Particularly prolific periods for meteors are called meteor showers. They typically occur at specific times of the year. The reason for this is simple. Certain regions of our solar system have high concentrations of debris. Each time the Earth passes through such a region during its journey around the Sun, a meteor shower takes place. Many of these meteoroid regions are created from the passing of a comet. This is the case for the Leonids; see below.

Morning is a better time for observing meteors than evening because the morning night sky faces the region of outer space that the Earth is moving toward. Click here to see a picture of the situation.

For more information about meteors told in spiritual language, see the fifteenth book of planetology of The Bible According to Einstein.

(Comets, by the way, are bodies made of ices, dust and rocks. When they approach the Sun, they melt somewhat. The solar wind then blows material off the comet to create its tail. Observationally, a comet near Earth looks like a hazy ball with a long wispy tail. Comets are created in the Oort cloud in the outer regions of our solar system when they are knocked toward the Sun. For more information about comets, see the fourteenth book of planetology of The Bible According to Einstein.)

Space agencies were somewhat worried that the 1999 Leonids might have caused damage to the more than 500 satellites currently in orbit around the Earth. Arrangements were made to position some satellites, including the Hubble Space Telescope, to minimize the chances of collisions.

The Leonids typically enter Earth's atmosphere at a speed of around 70 kilometers (40 miles) per second! This is about twice as fast as many meteors. The reason for this is that Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle orbits the Sun roughly in the opposite direction that the Earth orbits the Sun. In other words, Earth and debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle undergo almost head-on collisions.

In 1799, a "shower of shooting stars" startled people in the Americas, among whom was the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. During a four-hour period, he reported seeing thousands of huge fireballs, often with the brightness of Jupiter and with long smoke trails that lasted 7-8 seconds. Some even exploded.

Just before dawn on November 13, 1833, meteors fell from the sky in eastern North America like flakes of snow at a rate of about 30 flashes per second. Some people thought that the stars in Heaven were falling from the sky and that Judgement day had arrived. Of course, a few days later, the stars were still there. The 1833 Leonids were one of the most spectacular meteor displays of the second millennium.

In 1865, Ernst Tempel and Horace Tuttle independently discovered the comet to which their names would be attached. Eventually, the comet's period was determined to be a little more than 33 years, matching the interval between maximums in Leonids. The connection between the comet and the Leonids was deduced. Europeans observed a spectacular display on November 14, 1866.

In 1965, Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle was rediscovered after having been lost for nearly a century. It was soon realized that it would pass the closest to Earth since 1833. On November 17, 1966, astronomers in the central and western United States saw a tremendous storm of meteors, peaking at a rate of about 150,000 per hour during a 20-minute interval.